The Evolution of U.S.-Indian Ties The Evolution of Ashley J. Tellis U.S.-Indian Ties Missile Defense in an Emerging Strategic Relationship In a 1983 address to the American people at the height of the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan pro- posed “a long-term research and development program...toachieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles.” As Reagan readily acknowledged, atomic weaponry had bequeathed a re- markable equilibrium to the postwar international system. Yet, even when second-strike inventories were impregnable and their associated command and control mechanisms robust, strategic stability ultimately derived from the promise of horrendous retaliation. Calling this fact “a sad commentary on the human condition,” the president challenged the U.S. scientiªc community to develop the technical capabilities necessary “to intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies.”1 Such an endeavor ought to have been welcomed by a world that had grown increas- ingly fearful of nuclear war. Instead, Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) was derided at home and abroad. Within the United States, it became the subject of a harsh and galvanizing political controversy, and was pilloried on political, technical, economic, and strategic grounds.2 Internationally, it was perceived as an undesirable escalation of the nuclear arms race and received a reception, abetted by the Soviet Union, that ranged from deep skepticism to extreme hostility.3 Ashley J. Tellis is a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C. He was commissioned into the Foreign Service with diplomatic rank and served as Senior Adviser to the U.S. ambassador to India in 2001–03, when the dramatic transformation of U.S.-Indian relations began. This article is drawn from his forthcoming book, India and Missile Defense, which will be published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The author would like to thank Jawed Ashraf, Stephen Cohen, Claudio Lilienfeld, Daniel Markey, George Perkovich, Jayant Prasad, P.S. Raghavan, Albert Thibault, two anonymous reviewers, and several Indian officials, who have requested confidentiality, for their comments on the manuscript, as well as Michael Beckley, Clifford Grammich, and Faaiza Rashid for research and editorial assistance. 1. Ronald Reagan, “Announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative,” speech to the nation from the White House, March 23, 1983, http://www.presidentreagan.info/speeches/sdi.cfm. 2. For examples of the debate, see Harold Brown, ed., The Strategic Defense Initiative: Shield or Snare? (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1987); Alice Tepper Marlin and Paul Lippin, eds., The Strategic Defense Initiative: Costs, Contractors, and Consequences (New York: Council on Economic Priorities, 1985); John A. Jungerman, The Strategic Defense Initiative: A Primer and Critique (La Jolla: Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California, 1988); and Sidney D. Drell, Philip J. Farley, and David Holloway, The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: A Technical, Political, and Arms Control Assessment (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1985). 3. C. James Haug, The Strategic Defense Initiative: An International Perspective (Boulder, Colo.: Social Science Articles, 1987); Gennadi Gerasimov, Strategic Defense Initiative: Stellar Delusions, trans. International Security, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Spring 2006), pp. 113–151 © 2006 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 113 International Security 30:4 114 India, a leader of the Nonaligned Movement, then comprising close to two- thirds of the United Nations’ membership, joined in this opposition as well. Although Indira Gandhi, the prime minister in New Delhi at the time, had made concerted efforts to mend fences with the United States since 1981, she nevertheless criticized SDI obliquely at the UN General Assembly in Septem- ber 1983.4 Her minister for external affairs, P.V. Narasimha Rao, was more di- rect. He “warned that extension of [the] arms buildup to outer space would mean a permanent goodbye to disarmament and peace and [would] plunge mankind into a perpetual nightmare.” The resulting escalation “would either blow up the entire globe to smithereens or reduce humanity to a state of utter helplessness, making it a permanent hostage to terror from within and hegem- ony from without.”5 Not surprisingly, then, India’s ambassador to the Con- ference on Disarmament (CD), Muchkund Dubey, formally opposed the Reagan initiative in 1985 at the CD in Geneva and called for negotiations to prevent an arms race in outer space.6 The doyen of Indian defense analysts, K. Subrahmanyam, succinctly summed up the basis for India’s opposition when he wrote, “If till now both sides had only swords to ªght with, now one side is declaring its intent to get itself a shield also.”7 Fast-forward to 2001, when President George W. Bush enters ofªce deter- mined to bring to fruition what Reagan had previously begun. Between these two presidencies, however, the world had changed. The Soviet Union was no more, and the superpower arms race that deªned, threatened, but paradox- ically stabilized great power competition for close to ªfty years was rele- gated to a memory. Yet the threats to the United States were perceived not to have disappeared but only changed in form and intensity. These changing dangers—”rang[ing] from terrorists who threaten with bombs to tyrants in rogue nations intent upon developing weapons of mass destruction”8—were recognized well before 2001, but it took a revolutionary ªgure such as Presi- dent Bush to opt for a solution that was just as controversial as that proposed Natalia Mazitova (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1986); W.S. Newman and S. Stipchich, eds., International Seminar on Nuclear War, 5th sess., SDI, Computer Simulations, New Proposals to Stop the Arms Race (River Edge, N.J.: World Scientific, 1992); and Office of Public Affairs, The Soviet Propaganda Campaign against the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 1986). 4. Speech by Mrs. Indira Gandhi to the UN General Assembly, 38th sess., 9th plenary mtg., Sep- tember 28, 1983, http://www.meadev.nic.in/un/vol2/s38.htm. 5. “Rao Warns of Arms Race in Outer Space,” Strategic Digest, Vol. 14, No. 3 (March 1984), p. 232. 6. “India Opposes SDI,” Strategic Digest, Vol. 15, No. 10 (October 1985), p. 1304. 7. K. Subrahmanyam, “High Frontier War,” Strategic Analysis, Vol. 8, Nos. 2–3 (May-June 1983), p. 109. 8. White House, “Address of the President to the Joint Session of Congress,” February 27, 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/02/20010228.html. The Evolution of U.S.-Indian Ties 115 by Ronald Reagan some two decades earlier.9 In unveiling a “new framework for security and stability” in May 2001, President Bush proposed a course of action that would reduce the size of U.S. nuclear forces; emphasize nonprolif- eration and strengthen counterproliferation; and, most contentiously, resurrect strategic defenses by discarding the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Noting that the treaty “ignore[d] the fundamental breakthroughs in technology dur- ing the last 30 years” and prohibited the United States “from exploring all op- tions for defending against the threats that face us, our allies and other countries,” Bush concluded that the treaty should be replaced “with a new framework that reºects a clear and clean break from the past, and especially from the adversarial legacy of the Cold War.”10 Like the SDI of the early 1980s, Bush’s missile defense plans were politically polarizing. Domestically, the plans were criticized as misguided, ineffective, expensive, and destabilizing, in part because they threatened to attenuate the effectiveness of the Russian and Chinese nuclear deterrents.11 Internationally, the global community—still wedded to the linkage between strategic stability and mutual vulnerability—viewed the Bush initiative as yet another example of American unilateralism, recklessness, and patent disregard for world opin- ion.12 There were no endorsements of the plan from the major European and Asian partners of the United States, as all struggled to digest the import of Bush’s intended actions for their own security. Even those sympathetic to the president were wary of the consequences of provoking Moscow and Beijing into a new buildup of strategic offensive forces and possibly competing de- fenses as well.13 This time, however, there was one conspicuous exception to the general opposition: India. After a conversation between National Security Adviser 9. On the revolutionary impulses of the Bush administration, see Ivo H. Daalder and James M. Lindsay, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings, 2003). 10. George W. Bush, “Remarks by the President to Students and Faculty at National Defense Uni- versity,” Fort Lesley J. McNair, Washington, D.C., May 1, 2001, http://www.whitehouse.gov/ news/releases/2001/05/20010501-10.html. 11. See, for example, “What Congressional Critics Are Saying about the President’s Speech on Missile Defense,” May 4, 2001, http://www.clw.org/archive/nmd/bmdcriticscongress.html; “Edi- torials: Nationwide Viewpoints on Missile Defense,” July 25, 2001, http://www.clw.org/ archive/ nmd/editorials0701.html; and “Most Newspapers Editorialize against Unilateral Withdrawal from ABM Treaty,” October 25, 2001, http://www.clw.org/archive/nmd/editorials1001.html. 12. For a sampling of the critical international response to Bush’s missile defense plans, see “For- eign Reactions to U.S. Missile Defense Plans,” February 13, 2001, http://www.clw.org/archive/ nmd/bmdreactions.html; and “Statements by Foreign Leaders Opposing National Missile De- fense,” February 15, 2001, http://www.clw.org/archive/nmd/nmdleaders.html. 13. J. Michael Waller and Ilan Berman, eds., “Missile Defense Briefing Report,” No. 3 (Washing- ton, D.C.: American Foreign Policy Council, May 3, 2001); and Michael J.